Convert RAID 0 to RAID 10

[Unimurph]

So I'm building a new FreeNAS based NAS to eventually replace my aging Qnap TS-212. It is a bit of a budget build so I was hoping to start with a RAID 0 of 2 X 2TB WD RED drives and do regular backups to the old Qnap until I had the funds to purchase another matching pair of drives in maybe a few months time.

 

My question is: Is it possible to simply add 2 more identical drives and have FreeNAS simply build a RAID 10 out of the existing RAID 0? If yes is there any good reading you could suggest? if no I assume I'm best to wait until I can afford 4 drives? is there another easily upgrade-able solution?

 

Logically it seems like a simple procedure (2 striped drives mirrored to 2 other striped drives), but as experienced as I am with computers this is the first time I have really dealt with complex RAID. Performance is important as this machine will be serving media and doing backups for a whole household, and I'd also like to play around with some virtualization. 

[tt2468]

1 minute ago, Unimurph said:

So I'm building a new FreeNAS based NAS to eventually replace my aging Qnap TS-212. It is a bit of a budget build so I was hoping to start with a RAID 0 of 2 X 2TB WD RED drives and do regular backups to the old Qnap until I had the funds to purchase another matching pair of drives in maybe a few months time.

 

My question is: Is it possible to simply add 2 more identical drives and have FreeNAS simply build a RAID 10 out of the existing RAID 0? If yes is there any good reading you could suggest? if no I assume I'm best to wait until I can afford 4 drives? is there another easily upgrade-able solution?

 

Logically it seems like a simple procedure (2 striped drives mirrored to 2 other striped drives), but as experienced as I am with computers this is the first time I have really dealt with complex RAID. Performance is important as this machine will be serving media and doing backups for a whole household, and I'd also like to play around with some virtualization. 

Well in ZFS there are sort of 'levels' of pools. You could theoretically start with a stripe, then when you get 2 more drives, you can make another stripe, then mirror the two stripes together into one pool.

[Unimurph]

1 minute ago, tt2468 said:

Well in ZFS there are sort of 'levels' of pools. You could theoretically start with a stripe, then when you get 2 more drives, you can make another stripe, then mirror the two stripes together into one pool.

Wow! Quick reply! Thanks!

 

I guess the first thing I should do is play around with FreeNAS a bit more, I already have it installed on the machine in question with an old scrap drive that I got from somewhere. messing around with stuff you aren't worried about breaking is usually the best way to figure it out. 

 

Do you have much experience with FreeNAS? I'm using a 16GB Sandisk U100 SSD as the boot disk, most instructions suggest a USB drive, any input on using a small capacity SATA SSD instead?

[Unimurph]

23 minutes ago, Name Taken said:

A ZFS pool stripes data across one or more Vdevs so you can not use a RAID0 Vdev now then add another one for RAID10. Put 2 drives into a RAID1 Vdev now then you expand by adding another RAID1 Vdev.

Ah I see. Redundancy now performance later. Well that's sensible... and boring . 

 

It also kinda means that I might as well wait until I have all drives available. Write performance would be better than my old Qnap but I wouldn't see much of an improvement on read speed. I already have the new NAS setup with an old scrap single disk and was quite pleased to see about 70-75MB/s writes vs. 30MB/s on the Qnap but the reads were about the same as the ancient old Qnap with a single disk around 40-45MB/s. 

 

Any idea what kind of read speeds I should expect once I get the RAID 10 up?

i3-530, 8GB DDR3, 16GB Sandisk U100 boot disk, 4X2TB WD Red. 

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Unimurph said:

Any idea what kind of read speeds I should expect once I get the RAID 10 up?

i3-530, 8GB DDR3, 16GB Sandisk U100 boot disk, 4X2TB WD Red. 

Around 600MB/s read and 200MB/s write.

 

Here's a nice performance breakdown with tons of disk configurations: https://calomel.org/zfs_raid_speed_capacity.html

 

Quote

 1x 4TB, single drive,          3.7 TB,  w=108MB/s , rw=50MB/s  , r=204MB/s 
 2x 4TB, mirror (raid1),        3.7 TB,  w=106MB/s , rw=50MB/s  , r=488MB/s 
 2x 4TB, stripe (raid0),        7.5 TB,  w=237MB/s , rw=73MB/s  , r=434MB/s 
 3x 4TB, mirror (raid1),        3.7 TB,  w=106MB/s , rw=49MB/s  , r=589MB/s 
 3x 4TB, stripe (raid0),       11.3 TB,  w=392MB/s , rw=86MB/s  , r=474MB/s 
 3x 4TB, raidz1 (raid5),        7.5 TB,  w=225MB/s , rw=56MB/s  , r=619MB/s 
 4x 4TB, 2 striped mirrors,     7.5 TB,  w=226MB/s , rw=53MB/s  , r=644MB/s 
 4x 4TB, raidz2 (raid6),        7.5 TB,  w=204MB/s , rw=54MB/s  , r=183MB/s 
 5x 4TB, raidz1 (raid5),       15.0 TB,  w=469MB/s , rw=79MB/s  , r=598MB/s 
 5x 4TB, raidz3 (raid7),        7.5 TB,  w=116MB/s , rw=45MB/s  , r=493MB/s 
 6x 4TB, 3 striped mirrors,    11.3 TB,  w=389MB/s , rw=60MB/s  , r=655MB/s 
 6x 4TB, raidz2 (raid6),       15.0 TB,  w=429MB/s , rw=71MB/s  , r=488MB/s 
10x 4TB, 2 striped 5x raidz,   30.1 TB,  w=675MB/s , rw=109MB/s , r=1012MB/s 
11x 4TB, raidz3 (raid7),       30.2 TB,  w=552MB/s , rw=103MB/s , r=963MB/s 
12x 4TB, 6 striped mirrors,    22.6 TB,  w=643MB/s , rw=83MB/s  , r=962MB/s 
12x 4TB, 2 striped 6x raidz2,  30.1 TB,  w=638MB/s , rw=105MB/s , r=990MB/s 
12x 4TB, raidz (raid5),        41.3 TB,  w=689MB/s , rw=118MB/s , r=993MB/s 
12x 4TB, raidz2 (raid6),       37.4 TB,  w=317MB/s , rw=98MB/s  , r=1065MB/s 
12x 4TB, raidz3 (raid7),       33.6 TB,  w=452MB/s , rw=105MB/s , r=840MB/s 
22x 4TB, 2 striped 11x raidz3, 60.4 TB,  w=567MB/s , rw=162MB/s , r=1139MB/s 
23x 4TB, raidz3 (raid7),       74.9 TB,  w=440MB/s , rw=157MB/s , r=1146MB/s
24x 4TB, 12 striped mirrors,   45.2 TB,  w=696MB/s , rw=144MB/s , r=898MB/s 
24x 4TB, raidz (raid5),        86.4 TB,  w=567MB/s , rw=198MB/s , r=1304MB/s 
24x 4TB, raidz2 (raid6),       82.0 TB,  w=434MB/s , rw=189MB/s , r=1063MB/s 
24x 4TB, raidz3 (raid7),       78.1 TB,  w=405MB/s , rw=180MB/s , r=1117MB/s 
24x 4TB, striped raid0,        90.4 TB,  w=692MB/s , rw=260MB/s , r=1377MB/s 

 

[Unimurph]

9 hours ago, leadeater said:

Around 600MB/s read and 200MB/s write.

 

Here's a nice performance breakdown with tons of disk configurations: https://calomel.org/zfs_raid_speed_capacity.html

 

 

Theoretical max transfer speeds of the disks themselves I'm assuming. Obviously my network will be the limiting factor once I get this thing up and running. But knowing that the network is holding it back will drive me nuts and i'll end up investing in 10GBe equipment... aghh never ending cycle

[leadeater]

7 hours ago, Unimurph said:

Theoretical max transfer speeds of the disks themselves I'm assuming. Obviously my network will be the limiting factor once I get this thing up and running. But knowing that the network is holding it back will drive me nuts and i'll end up investing in 10GBe equipment... aghh never ending cycle

Yea it's a guess but it will be fairly accurate. That site with the tests was done on real hardware using WD Blacks so you will get slightly less performance but fairly comparable.

[SapphironZA]

* Edit - I really should read OP post more carefully

 

Note that Freenas and ZFS will use RAM as a disk buffer for reads and writes, so give it lots of RAM.  8GB min, but 16GB would be great for home use.

 

Its still a little soon, but the ECC RAM support in a Ryzen 3/5 would probably work great as a FreeNAS server.